Making a complaint
If you’re ready.
Your story might be a difficult one, but it can also be a story where your rights were violated. A story with a lack of informed consent (an intervention happened without your permission), disrespect, neglect or even assault.
If you would like to complain about your treatment in a maternity service, the first place to contact is your local PALS (Patient Advice and Liaison Service) who can give you advice and help you make a complaint. You can also contact NHS England or your local Clinical Commissioning Group (more info here).
AIMS (Association for Improvements in Maternity Services) produce a leaflet about making complaints, and you can find a lot of information on their website. Birthrights, the only UK organisation devoted to protecting human rights in birth, also have information about making a complaint. Both websites offer a great deal of information about your rights and choices during birth.
Our training sponsor Irwin Mitchell provide this extensive document here on how to make a complaint within the NHS. The document covers things like why and when you should make a complaint, what your rights are, which organisations are there to support you going through the process, how long it might take for your complaint to be answered, how it will be answered and much, much more. We highly recommend giving it a read when you are considering making a complaint.